At Happy Hour this week, we are meeting on the beach of Unawatuna on the southern coast of Sri Lanka.  As I type this, my toes are buried in the sand of one of the coolest beaches i’ve ever been too.  The best part though . . . .I’m actually drinking a beer!

Yummmmm! Ice . . . . cold . . . . beer!

For the first time since we’ve started meeting for our weekly Happy Hours, I’m sipping on a frosty mug of Lion Lager.  It’s Sri Lanka’s #1 beer and brewed locally here on the island.  A bottle costs about 200 Sri Lankan Rupees (equivalent to $1.50 in the US).  It’s a great beer, and so awesome to be able to walk into a bar and have a few drinks.

The last week has been busy for us, as we wrapped up things at school before our 2 1/2 week Christmas break, and traveling to Sri Lanka for the first leg of our holiday.  Here’s a few things from the past week:

• School this week has been a ton of fun!  At our school, we openly celebrate Christmas and everything associated with it.    We were excited that our school celebrates it, because they truly made it feel like the holidays around here.  They had a huge Christmas tree in the school office, we sang Christmas songs in class, made crafts of Santa Claus and lots of other things to remind us that it was Christmas time.  The best part was at a school assembly on the last day of school before the break.  The entire elementary school (about 1,000 kids and faculty) all sang “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to start the day.  It gave me goosebumps and was so festive!
• Christmas is a season full of miracles, and one of them happened while I was packing my back for our vacation.  As much as it upsets Rachel (now) and my family (when I was a kid), I have always been known to start packing my bag the day we leave for our trip.  Sometimes it can be a bit stressful, but I always seem to complete the task and haven’t missed a flight yet because of it.  Well this week, much to the surprise of my wife, I started packing my bag the day BEFORE our trip!  When she saw me stuffing t-shirts and board shorts into my bag 32 hours before our flight, she nearly fell to the floor.  I didn’t complete the job until the next day, about an hour before we left for the airport, but I thought it was a pretty big deal that I started packing so early.
• We arrived in Sri Lanka on Friday morning, and have are having an awesome time!  We are currently in the town of Unawatuna, which is a super chill beach town.  The beaches are incredible, the beer is cold, and the atmosphere is just what we needed to start the first leg of our Christmas break vacation.  We’ve already had so many cool experiences in just the first few days here, and we can’t wait to share them with everyone.  Stay tuned over the next few days/weeks as we share our stories with you.

Cheers,
-Mitch